Aug 30, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 10 segments
Today’s chat is with hedge layer and author Richard Negus. Richard’s no nonsense approach typifies many who work the land and it’s perhaps this honesty that makes his book ‘Words from the Hedge’ such…
Being pragmatic.
I mean, you make that point successfully at the end of the book of, you know, where are the hedge layers of the future going to come from? If it's not coming from the education sector.
You referenced a lady whose name I've forgotten now.
who's recently lobbied to introduce into their curriculum.
I mean, I suppose there will be always the challenges, is the fact that if you were to look at natural history, I am of the firm belief, as are a large section of the conservation community, sector
let's call us that
the farming is not the bad guy the farming is a victim of circumstance and it only has to reflect and react to what either government dictate policy might be in brussels it might have been in westminster it might have been in the in cardiff or in edinburgh well they will tell you you have to do it might be what The supermarket's demand.
And they have been told for two generations now that food must be cheap, should be cheap.
If you go and have all that and you also understand, so they're the pressures on farming, but you also understand that the only way that we can maintain a balance in biodiversity is by providing habitat.
providing food and control of predator numbers so that there is not an imbalance, I don't think that will get taught at GCSE.
I think that third leg of the stool, the predator imbalance thing, shouldn't be controversial, but it is.
controversial to too many people i think that there are some vested interests in say that ideas such as wilding will be pushed to the fore more because that happens to be the sexy zeitgeist at the moment it's also i act to say it's the politician's delight because on paper wilding looks absolutely easy what you mean i shut the gate and run away i like that idea And also, you know, this sort of cod history that they come out with that we're going to have, I don't know, velociraptors and flipping oryx and mammoths charging around the uplands or we're going to plant trees there.
So there'll be lots and lots of various political things that will most likely come into the natural history GCSE.
Being pragmatic.
I mean, you make that point successfully at the end of the book of, you know, where are the hedge layers of the future going to come from? If it's not coming from the education sector.
You referenced a lady whose name I've forgotten now.
who's recently lobbied to introduce into their curriculum.
I mean, I suppose there will be always the challenges, is the fact that if you were to look at natural history, I am of the firm belief, as are a large section of the conservation community, sector
let's call us that
the farming is not the bad guy the farming is a victim of circumstance and it only has to reflect and react to what either government dictate policy might be in brussels it might have been in westminster it might have been in the in cardiff or in edinburgh well they will tell you you have to do it might be what The supermarket's demand.
And they have been told for two generations now that food must be cheap, should be cheap.
If you go and have all that and you also understand, so they're the pressures on farming, but you also understand that the only way that we can maintain a balance in biodiversity is by providing habitat.
providing food and control of predator numbers so that there is not an imbalance, I don't think that will get taught at GCSE.
I think that third leg of the stool, the predator imbalance thing, shouldn't be controversial, but it is.
controversial to too many people i think that there are some vested interests in say that ideas such as wilding will be pushed to the fore more because that happens to be the sexy zeitgeist at the moment it's also i act to say it's the politician's delight because on paper wilding looks absolutely easy what you mean i shut the gate and run away i like that idea And also, you know, this sort of cod history that they come out with that we're going to have, I don't know, velociraptors and flipping oryx and mammoths charging around the uplands or we're going to plant trees there.
So there'll be lots and lots of various political things that will most likely come into the natural history GCSE.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.